Your customer's energy efficient data center starts with you

What’s the secret to profitable business growth? You need to be the solution provider who can help your customers overcome their biggest challenge in today’s data centers: high energy costs that are breaking the bank.

The costs of changing technology

With today’s accelerating energy costs, customers don’t just need a one-time product sale. They need a partner to manage their data center life cycle. But they are already reducing budget in other areas to make ends meet, and may not be ready to take on the costs of a new service.

So, how can you make more money? Gone are the days of customers shelling out for upfront expenses and product sales. Here to stay, at least for now, is the shift to operational expenses associated with maintaining and optimizing the data center. With revenue from hardware and server sales declining due to the adoption of virtualization, colocation, and cloud services, you need to fill in the financial gaps, too.

Proven solutions for more efficient operations

This is where Schneider Electric™ can help. You may be used to selling APC™ by Schneider Electric products such as racks, power protection, cooling units, and accessories. But you could be selling a lot more. With our end-to-end solutions encompassing hardware, software, and services, you can turn one-off product sales into long-term profitable relationships by serving customer needs throughout the data center life cycle.

What is the opportunity? The typical data center life cycle averages twenty years. The first two years are spent on the design and build phase, during which you can profit from relevant hardware sales. The next eighteen years are spent maintaining, operating, and optimizing the data center. By establishing a competency in life cycle services, you can become an indispensable resource for your customers’ energy management needs during those remaining years.

First, though, you will need to show them how life cycle services lead to a more efficient data center and sustainable savings.

An energy audit will uncover the opportunities for achievable, persistent savings over time. Next, develop an action plan for delivering these results. If you can offer cost-effective, energy-efficient solutions that provide real savings, you’ve taken a big step toward retaining that customer for the foreseeable future.

Expand profitability with services

For long-term success, services are the key to recovering revenue losses from shrinking hardware margins. Services based around energy management, infrastructure management, and the data center life cycle will keep you connected with your customers, leaving the door open for serving future needs. Plus, hardware, software, and services bundles can offer greater value and incentive for increased solution adoption.

Adding services to your resume can only increase your value as a trusted advisor. And with a strategic mix of energy management solutions and services, you can monitor, manage, and control energy usage for your customers, lowering their energy costs by up to 30% while you boost profits.

Turn customer needs into your opportunities

Whether it’s remote monitoring, energy assessments, add-on services for break/fix or start-up, comprehensive service packages, extended warranties, or preventative maintenance, there are many services you can provide through Schneider Electric or on your own to boost your income while solving a critical customer need.

We can also provide you with the education, support, and portfolio of highly reputable products and solutions you need to build a professional and profitable energy management business.

And with the increasing demand for more efficient operations, it’s only a matter of time before customers find it a necessity rather than an option to adopt DCIM, energy management, and life cycle services. You’ll be ready to maintain and optimize today’s IT spaces in the most energy-efficient and cost-saving ways.

So, how soon can you offer your customers relief from high data center energy costs? With solutions, strategies, and services from Schneider Electric, you can start today!

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EnergySTEP: Your first step toward managing the data center life cycle.This energy assessment, available for data centers or network closets, is sold as a SKU, and can be marked up and co-branded. This “foot in the door” service gets you into a customer’s IT environment early in your relationship, giving you the potential to manage the 8–15 year time span that encompasses the operation phase of the data center life cycle.

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Which customers need your help today?

Now may be the right time to approach them with life cycle and energy management services if they:

> Have an older/legacy data center with capacity, efficiency, and reliability concerns